Monday, December 3, 2012

Keep Your Powder Dry - 1945

“Keep Your Powder Dry” (1945) shows a sorority-like
atmosphere in the Women’s Army Corps of World War II, but poignantly tells a back
story greater than the lightweight scenario on the surface.This movie, like the WAC when it began, walks
a tightrope between what the public would accept, and what enlightened possibilities
could be explored for women.The Army
brass was more supportive of the program than the doubtful congressmen who
argued the legislation to permit it, and more than the flippant journalists who
treated it as a carnival act, and more than the ladies’ fellow male GIs, who
were suspicious of the virtue, and femininity, of WACs.

The Army brass, such as Generals Eisenhower and Marshall,
knew how desperately they were needed in a two-front war.

Next week, it’s a lighter tone in the post-World War II
world of “Never Wave at a WAC” (1953) with Rosalind Russell, and “Skirts Ahoy”
(1952) with Esther Williams.

“Keep Your Powder Dry” stars Lana Turner, Laraine Day, and
Susan Peters as three WAC recruits.We
start the show with an operetta lyric over the opening credits that reminds us,
“…for the WAC is a soldier, too.”

It sounds like a college cheer and we might meet Andy Hardy
somewhere. The title card looks like a Nancy Drew book.

How desperately needed more “manpower” was in the service is
illustrated in a strikingly more matter-of-fact manner by Bing Crosby on his
Kraft Music Hall radio program on October 7, 1943 when he made this pitch:

“If you’re a woman between 20 and 50, if you’re not now in a
war job, if you have no children under 14 and if you’ve had two years of high
or business school the Army’s got work for you, work that’s vital for victory…that
means more soldiers for combat while members of the WAC take over technical
jobs in communications, transport and air force, and x-ray photography, and
medical and dental labs, in 155 different branches of Army service that the WAC
is trained to handle.The Women’s Army
Corps trains you, the career is yours forever.The pay is that of a soldier of equal rank.It’s a really important job waiting in the
WAC for every gal who is anxious to serve her country at home or overseas.The WAC has a recruiting office not far from
you.So do your part in hastening the
ultimate victory of our forces.So,
speed them back, join the WAC.”

The movie is less direct.

Lana Turner is a spoiled rich girl who parties and wakes up
with hangovers (we get an intro shot of the teasing trail of her clothes on the
floor) while her best friend, the parasitic Natalie Schafer (yes, yes, I know,
Mrs. Thurston Howell III), wakes her up and begs her once again to get her
lawyer to release the REST of her inheritance so they can party even more.

Miss Turner’s lawyer reminds her that the trustees of her
inheritance will not release her money until she proves to be more responsible.So, she joins the WAC, thinking it’ll look
good and she can always duck out later.

Susan Peters is a
young wife who, in an unusual goodbye scene, helps her husband pack for Army
duty while he tenderly wishes her luck on her upcoming basic training.She, too, it appears is bound for the WAC, as
something productive to do while her husband is away.She believes she will help the war effort and
bring him home sooner.This was a common
reason for lots of WAC enlistees to join.

The third member of the trio is Laraine Day, who is an Army
brat, chomping at the bit to join the WAC and be a soldier like her officer
papa.He is pleased, and not a bit worried
about her virtue or femininity.

A reassurance to a skittish American public, perhaps, who
truly wondered if they were tearing the fabric of American womanhood apart by
allowing this audacious thing of women into the Army, even in gender-segregated
units.

I don’t suppose this film was shown overseas to the boys on
the battlefields, but it might have done them good to see an earnest film about
earnest young women in uniform not unlike the girls they left behind.

Certainly no threats to their manhood here,
though I smile at the scene late in the movie where Miss Turner looks like one
of the GIs with her shirt open and her tie draped loosely around her neck as if
she were about to open a deck of cards for poker.

It’s easy to dismiss much of the film as schmaltz unless you
get that society at the time was uneasy about a woman wearing pants, let alone
learning mechanical and technical skills.

We see the women briefly wrestling in hand-to-hand combat training
(in work dresses), but most of their time is spent marching and…archery?The marching cadence in soprano voices.

The initiation into the WAC world of military discipline,
and helpfulness in the war effort, is filtered through a fine sieve as most of
the movie centers on the personality conflicts of the girls and how they
overcome challenges.Lana Turner, who
tops her class in identifying aircraft not because she studied the material but
because she dated so many pilots, has discovered a new sense of purpose in the
Army.Never taken seriously before, she
rises to the occasion and becomes a good soldier, with only two problems: her
old martini-soaked friends won’t leave her alone, and Laraine Day is a thorn in
her side.

Laraine Day, in her capacity as having grown up on Army
posts, becomes the camp know-it-all on how to do things.She might get as irritating to the audience
as she is to Miss Turner, except that Miss Day is so very good in her
role.She’s almost pathologically bossy
and interfering, and we see — and by the end of the movie she will confess —
that she feels threatened by the glamour girl Turner.Her authoritarian attitude over the other
girls is due to her insecurity at being bested by outsiders who know nothing of
her cherished world of Army life.Her
self-revelation at the end where, crestfallen, she faces the truth about her overbearing behavior is a
strong, heart-tugging scene as we watch her crumble inside.

Both Miss Day and Miss Turner would have killed each other
long before the movie ended were it not for their mutual love of Susan Peters,
the peacemaker of the trio.Susan Peters
displays here again that quiet sensitivity and luminous screen presence that was
launching her into a promising film career.Unfortunately, it is difficult to recall Peters without also recalling
her tragic end, which began shortly after this film was completed and a few
months before it was released.

As many film buffs are aware, Susan Peters was accidently
shot during a hunting trip with her husband, Richard Quine, and some friends.She was permanently paralyzed from the waist
down, and though attempted with astounding courage to make an acting comeback
in a wheelchair, died in 1952 from a combination of ailments and crushing
depression that completely destroyed her will to live.She was only 31.

Miss Peters’ character is the least confident of the trio,
and her lesson by the end of the film is to achieve through hard work and diligence,
and find self-confidence at last.All of
these women go through a pre-feminist era experience of empowerment (catch the
scene where the girls fix the general’s broken down car for him), and Hollywood
does not begrudge them or belittle them. Not this time.Not when the country was looking for women
recruits.What a safe incubator Hollywood could be from the real world.

Except, of course, for the burning question of the day as to
what a WAC’s panties look like.We are
told they are olive drab, but we do not get a long look at the
unmentionables.If we think this scene
is frivolous to the point of eye-rolling, then remember that for the smart-ass
journalists covering the first WAC recruitment (which started as the WAAC,
Women’s Auxiliary Army Corp before they achieved regular Army status), their most common questions were what
color was the girls' underwear, and whom could they date?

The dating question is considered in the film, too.

The title of the film comes from the famous quote from the
1834 poem by William Blacker who, writing about Oliver Cromwell “quotes”
Cromwell: “Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!”

Of course, in the cheeky manner of studio writers, not
unlike smart-ass journalists, the title in this case also refers to a woman’s
cosmetics.

Things to note: Agnes Moorehead as company commander is a
woman of quiet, ladylike authority.Her
scene where she gives sad news to Susan Peters is both dignified and gently understated. She is clearly helpless to do anything more than offer kindness from a respectful distance.

I like the
camera shot of Peters alone in Moorehead’s office, shot from above.It’s an instant image of despair and
loneliness.

The girls ride off in a truck on which is painted the words “Wolf
Trap”.Apparently the men in the Army
Air Corps weren’t the only ones who could paint sexy slogans on their machines.

Many scenes were filmed in Des Moines, Iowa and Camp Oglethorpe,
Georgia, which were actual training places for the WAC.

The girls do a lot of walking and marching in front of rear
screen projection of other troops.This
is why the Allies won the war.We scared
the enemy with our rear-screen projection of thousands and thousands of
soldiers following right behind us.

Lee Patrick as the ex-vaudevillian who becomes an Army cook.

June Lockhart as the resident Southern Gal.

They drink a lot of Coke.

A scene of swimming at a pond, like water nymphs basking in
the sun, drinking their Coke.Evidently
the WAC has time for picnics, too.

For more on the realities of WAC service, their importance
to the war effort during World War II (some 150,000 women served) have a look
at this article by Judith A. Bellafaire.It will fill you in on some remarkable circumstances and achievements of
the women who served, and will profoundly increase your respect for the ladies
who were pioneers among women in the military.The WAC was discontinued in 1978, and women serving in the Army from
that point served along with men.

On Thursday we’ll have a look at “Cry Havoc” which, though
much more serious and troubling in nature due to the extreme danger faced by
the women on Bataan during World War II, nevertheless caused less public
controversy because these women were Army Nurses.That a female nurse dying in a jungle was
more socially acceptable than a female truck mechanic working in the motor pool
is just one of those things we need to discover if we are to lump these two disparate
films together as equally important artifacts from World War II.They are, as you’ll see, quite different.

In the meantime, let us not forget that Her Majesty, Queen
Elizabeth, while she was still Princess Elizabeth, served in Britain’s
counterpart Auxiliary Territorial Service as a truck mechanic and driver.Have a look at the Pathé newsreel clip below:

2 comments:

The role of women has perceived by the WACS themselves, by the society of the time and the society of today brings many interesting levels to the movie. Your insights add so much to my enjoyment of classic film.

Thanks, CW. The one or two British films I've seen on their female military counterparts covered the experience with less cuteness. One senses Hollywood was trying to shoehorn what had been considered an outlandish idea into American approval.

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Recent Comments on Past Posts:

It Happened to Jane is special to my family. My mother was selected to play the wife of Aaron Caldwell, the Chester town selectman in the movie and has a speaking part about the parking meter revenues gathered from outside his general store in the town center. My older brother was one of the cub scouts delivering coal donated by town residents to fuel Old 97. We grew up in Deep River. A few years ago a niece provided every member of music family copies of It Happened to Jane on DVD. The Connecticut River valley was truly an idyllic spot for growing up in the mid-Twentieth Century!

Thank you, the Lux Theatre broadcast was absolutely marvelous, and far superior, as you have indicated, the film. I have always admired Dorothy McGuire, and she has it all over Jean Peters. This is not as clear cut a differential between Joseph Cotton and Dan Dailey, but at this point in their grand careers, I will take Dan. Again thank you.

I jus watched this and I have to agree... the ending let me down. She left Howard Keel!!!! I've had a crush on him since seeing Seven Brides when I was 10.I did love the message that Rose Marie can be herself.But I'm still sad. Seriously, Rose Marie, you chose the wrong man.

My wife and I go back two decades for our love of “Remember the Night” and its heartwarming story...P.S. As I type these words I am reminded of the inscription my wife had engraved inside the wedding ring I now wear… “Remember The Night.”

Beautiful piece, Jacqueline, about yet another movie from the Unjustly Forgotten file. I agree a video release is decades overdue, (What is wrong with Universal Home Video? You'd think the only movies they ever made were monsters and Abbott & Costello. And don't even get me started on the pre-'48 Paramounts they're sitting on.) I count myself lucky to have scored a decent 16mm print on eBay some years back; otherwise it would have been a good 40 years since I saw it.

I happened upon this piece and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. Really a great appreciation of a wonderful movie. Raoul Walsh is one of my favorite directors and this is the first of his movies I ever remember seeing--it was on the big screen back in 1952 so I guess that dates me but a movie like this was ideal for my age, both for the adventure and romance.

I guess I'm going to be busy reading all your blogs that touch on events I'm familiar with.

Judgement At Nuremberg caught my attention as I had the privilege of working in it for some 60 days. But more so as the German WWII history always recall my own trials during the war.

I suppose we filmed this around 1959-1960 which is not that long after the ending of the war. Reconstruction in Europe was far from accomplished. For the audience in 1961 this history was still a part of everyone's life.

I was overwhelmed sitting in that set and listening to the greatest actors of that generation orate day after day... an endless live theater.